Hand Sanitizer Not Available Enough at 1 in 5 US Hospitals

Anyone who has spent time in a US hospital has likely seen a nurse walk in to a patient's room for treatment and quickly sanitize their hands before and after treating the patient. Hand sanitizing stations are common throughout hospitals, but a new study says a fifth of US hospitals don't make hand sanitizer available enough.

Writing in the American Journal of Infection Control, researchers from the Columbia School of Nursing and the World Health Organization report that the opportunity to prevent health care-related infections is being missed by one-in-five US hospitals which do not make broad enough use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

"When hospitals don't focus heavily on hand hygiene, that puts patients at unnecessary risk for preventable health care-associated infections," said Laurie Conway, who is researching for her PhD at Columbia. "The tone for compliance with infection control guidelines is set at the highest levels of management, and our study also found that executives aren't always doing all that they can to send a clear message that preventing infections is a priority."

Conway and her collaborators, including Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi, leader of the WHO infection control program Clean Care is Safer Care, surveyed hand-hygiene compliance at 168 facilities in 42 states and Puerto Rico.

The survey found that 77.5 percent of the facilities made alcohol-based hand sanitizer available at every point of care, but that that one in 10 facilities reported that their administration did not made a clear commitment to supporting hand hygiene improvement.

Having the commitment to hand-hygiene improvement it critical, the researchers said, because currently about 100,000 people die each year from health care-associated infections.

"The survey also shows that facilities participating in the WHO global hand hygiene campaign achieved a higher level of progress," said study co-author Didier Pittet, the director of the Infection Control Program and WHO Collaborating Center on Patient Safety. "While hand hygiene compliance is the responsibility of every health care worker, US health care facilities would certainly benefit from coordinated national and sub-national efforts aimed at hand hygiene improvement. They would also gather innovative ideas and trans-cultural approaches by participating in global efforts such as the WHO campaign."